FWP:

About those curls: The beloved in the ghazal always has long black 'curls', and extensive use is made of them: they can be bonds, fetters, serpents, etc. for the lover. After all these years of taking the beloved's black curls for granted, it only struck me recently (Jan. 2009) how few North Indian (and Pakistani) women actually have extremely curly hair like this. Moreover, in Ghalib's day, even women who did have curly hair didn't wear it in curls. Women traditionally wore their hair as long as possible, and preferably never cut it at all. They pulled it into a tight braid or pinned it up in careful arrangements, and also regularly oiled it. These practices made even curly hair appear straight (as some of my curly-haired students have pointed out to me). Yet I can't think of a single verse in which the beloved has straight hair. Even in {233,12}, where the situation would seem to work ideally with straight hair, the 'curls' are officially present. This situation seems parallel to the non-naturalistic use of 'spring' in the Urdu ghazal: for discussion, see {49,4}.

In this verse we see a fine example of a great poet's powers-- each commentator
admires a different feature of the verse, and all of them rightly. The vuh
in the first line is used idiomatically, for strong emphasis.

I love Ghalib's usual trick of using an expression both literally
and metaphorically, as in kih dekhaa hii nahii;N . Of
course, if she hides her face behind a veil, her face is something that hasn't
been seen; and her beauty too is something unparallelled, and thus has never
before been seen. Moreover, the 'that state that no one has ever seen' may
also be the extraordinary state that the lover gets into, once his imagination
has been fully charged up by such piquant non-revelation.

Likewise in the case of khulnaa, with
its three meanings of 'being revealed', 'opening, loosening', and 'appearing
well, adorning,' all of which are made to suit perfectly to the circumstances
of her use of her veil.

And of course, her being a sho;x
is what makes her cleverly adjust her veil to maximum effect in the
first place.

Want to know what this particular beloved did next?
See {14,7}. It is obviously the same clever,
mischievous, temperamental beloved in both verses.